Having now read the fine pdf you gents have kindly posted, I really enjoy the game. However, there is one sticking point for me which is how armor absorbs damage.

I understand why one would have it randomized, but for the sake of not hearing my players whine about only soaking one bit of damage, I was thinking of making the amount of damage absorbed a static value. Looking over the die types, it seems like it would be difficult to just halve the die, because then we get types of armor that have little value to those playing, and would never be bought, unless I dropped it into the game

So, does anyone have any recommendations on how to jiggle things around a bit?

Swill (the lead system designer) likes randomness. The main argument was, if plate always absorbs, say, 4 pts, there's no way that some creatures/things will ever be able to damage someone wearing it, at all (if you attack with a weapon that does, say, 1d4). So since weapon damage is random, we went with armor damage being random too.

That's not to say you can't try it out. Or, add some ever-unpopular degradation mechanics: new plate absorbs 4 pts. Then after soaking 20 pts, it absorbs 3-4, then 2-4, then 1-4. Or something like that. Makes the crafting skills a bit more valuable and adds some realism to the game, at the expense of bookkeeping and player griping.

Or add an 'armor use' discipline similar to shield use, in that you get a +1 bonus, or re-roll 1s or something.

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Let us know if you hit on something that works well for your group._________________The GM is your friend.

It's true this was considered from a few angles. The idea of course was that armor should protect the wearer from blows, but should actually make it more difficult to dodge them.

With that in mind, the onus is put either on the attacker or the defender to employ this effect. As Greg mentions, it wasn't ideal to give non-random bonuses, as some suits of normal armor would then make the wearer immune to some normal weapons. (Ex. A guy wearing plate, that absorbs maybe 5 or 6 points couldn't be harmed by a dagger at all.)

Random absorption addresses this.

Another option is to make a 'hit by' requirement for the attacker. That is, say in studded leather (rating of 2) a character with a 12 dodge is hit with a 'to-hit' roll of 12 but absorbs 2 damage. He is hit at 13 but absorbs 1 damage, and his armor is bypassed at a hit roll of 14 or above. Personally, I think this is kind of sexy, but is pretty crunchy. Auto-hits like a Forcebolt might just have to bypass armor here.

The above could be simplified as an all or nothing effect to simplify things. In any case, I'd love to hear your thoughts/experiences with this. -This is another one for Optional Arcana.

You could also go with armor having a set amount of absorbtion when it is first crafted, and all damage subtracts from this amount until the armor simply breaks at 0. I would recommend having certain kinds of damage, such as heat damage, do double damage against metal armor. Of course, repair costs would have to be fairly expensive, but it would be a good way of making the armor creation proficiency useful. I like armor as it is, but you could try this. If it seemed unbalanced, you could always have armor absorbance take away only half of the total damage dealt.

Or it would be fairly easy to hack hit locations into the game. Not sure if that's the best choice though, because It would require another dice roll in combat, to determine where the hit went.

And yeah, it would stand to reason that if we standardized an amount that certain armors stop certain weapons wouldn't work against that armor. That sort of stands to reason, after all, you go after a guy in plate mail with a dagger, you'll probably do very little damage against him unless your strong.

Which brings up a point that someone who really worked at being good with the dagger would still have a chance to damage the guy in plate. After all, with even weapon mastery 1 you're getting past their defense. Though that's only if you roll max damage. Hm, this is a lot more convoluted than I thought.

Until I get my playtest of the game in, we'll keep it as it is, but still.

Well, my thought is a dagger can still get a guy in plate in the armpit, behind the knee, in the face/neck, etc.

That's where the 'hit by' option makes sense to me. Say a guy with a dodge 10 has plate (say absorb 8 ). If he is hit with a 10, the plate absorbs 8. If he's hit with a 14, the plate absorbs 4. If he's hit with an 18 or higher, the armor doesn't absorb. It was bypassed, or the hit was very well placed (the dagger hilt to the temple).

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of random armor, especially not when its a single die. It's too linear. I think something like plate mail should be at least 2d4 or something similar. Yes, daggers should have little chance of harming someone encased in full plate... longswords as well. It should take someone extremely skilled or strong to get past it, hence the reason that a fully armored knight was the tank of their day. As for the 'lucky shot' to the visors and arm pits, that is what Weapon Mastery, Critical Hit and Backstab are for.

As written they are taking a lot more hits (-8 Impudence) for a highly variable amount of protection. Doesn't seem like a fair trade to me.

Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of random armor, especially not when its a single die. It's too linear. I think something like plate mail should be at least 2d4 or something similar. Yes, daggers should have little chance of harming someone encased in full plate... longswords as well. It should take someone extremely skilled or strong to get past it, hence the reason that a fully armored knight was the tank of their day. As for the 'lucky shot' to the visors and arm pits, that is what Weapon Mastery, Critical Hit and Backstab are for.

As written they are taking a lot more hits (-8 Impudence) for a highly variable amount of protection. Doesn't seem like a fair trade to me.

Tywyll, I would point out some reasonable options on how to deal with armor in pages 4-6 of the Wayfarers Guild Journal #1. I think the article may be of interest to you.

As for the realism of a dagger being able to penetrate plate armor or not, I once saw in a documentary (I highly recommend viewing this well made series by the way) that this weapon was especially effective against heavily armored opponents.

This quote from Wikipedia's dagger entry is also worth noting :

"In the Late Middle Ages, knives with blade designs that emphasized thrusting attacks, such as the stiletto, became increasingly popular, and some thrusting knives commonly referred to as 'daggers' ceased to have a cutting edge. This was probably due to the custom of fighting in plate armour, where cutting attacks were ineffective and focus was laid instead on thrusts with narrow blades aimed at armour plate intersections (or the eye slits of the helmet visor)."

And if you want daggers to be armor piercing then give them that quality same as crossbows, though both these. While we're at it though lets not forget that part of learning to wear armor was learning how to use it to deflect blows (by definition an increase in Dodge).

There are plenty of easy ways to increase damage but few easy methods of increasing armor absorbing potential.

Also lets not forget that platemail was nowhere near as difficult to move around in as most games portray it. I've seen a guy do a cartwheel in full plate armor to make that point and I'm pretty sure he wasn't the 8th level needed for max wear armor!

As you say though, playability should come first. I think to make it fair I'll just make half the max value constant and roll the rest so plate would stop 4+d4.

Also lets not forget that platemail was nowhere near as difficult to move around in as most games portray it. I've seen a guy do a cartwheel in full plate armor to make that point and I'm pretty sure he wasn't the 8th level needed for max wear armor!

As you say though, playability should come first. I think to make it fair I'll just make half the max value constant and roll the rest so plate would stop 4+d4.

That could be a good way to do this but I would like to specify that a character is not necessarily expected to be of 8th level to be able to wear full plate although he would need to be of 8th level to have Armor Use VIII. For example, a typical fighter with a strength of 14 would need Armor Use VI to wear it without any penalty but he could do so with Armor Use IV and suffer from a -2 impedance modifier to agility and movement related stats which might well be worth the trade-off._________________My campaign's rulesMy Wayfarers review